Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "1980 in video games" in English language version.
The game produced one billion dollars in 1980 alone
It was all Midway could do to keep up with the demand for the quarter-munching machines, churning out a hundred thousand of them in 1980 (three times that number were produced over the next seven years).
In 1980, the company introduced Asteroids to compete with the Space Invaders arcade game, which was produced by another company. Atari's version proved to be a popular alternative. By the end of the year, 70,000 of the units had been shipped.
Examination of the graphics of 10 video machines, selected from the list of the 20 most popular videos for 1980 as published by Play Meter, supported our initial observations. (...) The three most popular video games for 1980 were Asteroids, Galaxian, and Space Invaders in that order. All three video games involve shooting electronic projectiles at rocks in space or at alien invaders.
By 1980, some 300,000 Space Invader video arcade games were in use in Japan, and an additional 60,000 in the United States.
Despite the success of his game, Iwatani never received much attention. Rumors emerged that the unknown creator of Pac-Man had left the industry when he received only a $3500 bonus for creating the highest-grossing video game of all time.
